As determined by our strategic plan, we operate in action teams to work towards the collective network goal. These six action teams represent different leverage points that have the potential to radically change farm to school and early childhood.
Ease of Use
Facilitators: Rachel Huff, Liz Kenton & Reeve Basom
Goal: build a community of practice for shared learning, peer support, and emergent topics among people doing work across the state to connect farms, food, and children.
Strategies of Change:
- Welcome and invite the existing community of practice and people from the broader community to participate in, benefit from, and contribute to the state's farm to school and early childhood connections and resources
- Hold space to build relationships, troubleshoot, share resources, find opportunities for collaboration, identify topics that need attention, and celebrate with people doing similar work (monthly open calls and regional gatherings)
- Reflect and respond to emergent opportunities and issues, including collaboration with other network action teams or outside partners
🗓: Meets second Wednesday of the month at 3:00PM
Research & Evaluation
Facilitator: Qing Ren
Goal: use data and evidence to inform the network’s approach to moving toward the network goal.
Strategies of Change:
- Monitor the progress of the farm to school and early childhood work in Vermont, including local purchasing
- Collaborate with action teams to identify research and evaluation needs by using a deliberative approach to interpret the network goal, identify audiences, and develop plans. Based on evaluation plans, collect data to answer the questions and inform decisions.
- Provide a compelling case to show the value of farm to school and early childhood programs to our communities, legislators, and decision-makers.
- Identify gaps in Vermont’s farm to school work and make recommendations on how to address the gaps based on evidence.
🗓: Meets fourth Wednesday of the month at 1:00PM
Demonstrating the Educational Value of Farm to School
Facilitators: Elyse Perambo & Jen Cirillo
Goal: build a strong commitment for farm to school from key leaders in education, and create a stronger alignment between farm to school and current priority initiatives in education.
Strategies of Change:
- Identify ways to give youth a voice in farm to school and early childhood to help facilitate change
- Advocate the value of farm to school and early childhood to administrators and community leaders
- Identify and share data supporting farm to school & early childhood programs in Vermont
🗓: Meets third Thursday of the month at 1:00PM
Local Purchasing
Facilitators: Kayla Strom
Goal: increase the amount of local food in schools and early childhood centers while making the system easier to use for both the producers and the buyers.
Strategies of Change:
- Support an increase in the number of local producers sold to schools and early childhood programs
- Improve ease of access to information around local availability of food and assets
- Increase our team's involvement in farm to early childhood
🗓: Meets second Monday of the month at 3:00PM
Policy & Demand
Facilitators: Keely Agan & Betsy Rosenbluth
Goal: deepen relationships with legislators and develop new champions to support farm to school and early childhood programs and policies.
Strategies of Change:
- Work on introducing legislation for Universal Meals in early childhood settings
- Support supervisory unions to utilize the Local Foods Incentive and explore ways an incentive could be implemented in the early childhood setting
- Identify and bolster demand for farm to early childhood programs through policy
- Use the evaluation of Local Foods Incentive and Universal School Meals to continue expanding access to local food in school meals through legislative action
- Share stories of our policy and legislative work to grow support
🗓: Meets second and fourth Thursday of the month at 3:00PM
Farm to Early Childhood
Facilitator: Cynthia Greene
Goal: ensure farm to early childhood approaches are fully integrated into early childhood systems and programs as foundational practices which support high-quality early childhood education. We believe nutrition access, security, and sovereignty are fundamental building blocks of healthy development and should be universally supported accessible components to all early childhood programs.
Strategies of Change (from the 2023–26 Vermont Farm to Early Childhood Policy Strategic Plan):
- Strengthen partner knowledge and impacts of farm to early childhood
- Integrate farm to early childhood with state level early childhood systems
- Increase cross sector resources to support farm to early childhood
🗓: Meets second Monday of the month, 9:30–11:00AM